Ministry of Defence officials received bonuses as high as £60,000 while
thousands of soldiers were being sacked.

Around 70 civil servants shared bonuses of almost £700,000 while 4,480 frontline soldiers were made redundant on Tuesday.

They shared around £10,000 each as a reward for trying to cut down on wasteful money in their department.

One civil servant received a £60,000 bonus on top of a high salary while others were given £48,720, £36,541 and £35,729.

The figures were uncovered by Conservative MP Priti Patel who told the Daily Mail: “In light of austerity and the cuts we have been required to make, particularly at the MoD, this shows the need for restraint around the whole bonus culture.

“The case for reallocating resources from the bonus pot to the frontline is easy to make more than ever right now as cuts fall on the Armed Forces.

“There will be anger from Forces' families that this culture still exists, especially if they have had bad news this week."

Labour defence spokesman Jim Murphy added: “At a time when we are making thousands of troops redundant to save money, the MoD must look again at whether it has got its priorities right.”

The troops who were made redundant would generally be on basic salaries of £17,265.

Heads have paid out the bonuses while military resources are being cut down and pay rises for personnel are being capped at 1 per cent for two years.

Chancellor George Osborne wants the ministry to find £4.7billion of savings and fill a £36billion hole in the budget for equipment it has ordered, but cannot afford.

Defence chiefs are reducing the number of regular soldiers in the Army from 102,000 to 82,000 and a total of 11,100 Army, Royal Navy and RAF personnel have so far been made redundant by the government since 2010.

Over the same period, the number of MoD civil servants has fallen by 19,920 to 63,080.

Figures released to Parliament show that in the last financial year, 71 top bureaucrats - either employed permanently or on fixed-term contracts - shared £682,026, with payouts averaging £9,606.